Here’s something else. In the third or fourth inning, two unbelievable things happened while the cleanup hitter was at bat for the Rocks. They had a couple of men on base at the time. He fouled off an inside fastball and the bat flew out of his hands in two pieces. When the top half landed on the infield and Straw Berry picked it up at shortstop, about a pound of loose cork began spilling out of one end. I broke up laughing when I saw it. It was an open and shut case of a bat that had been hollowed out and corked up to give it more zip.
Whiting argued that the batter should be called out and given the old heave ho. But the umpire at home acted like he’d been hired to defend the guy. He said he might have been using someone else’s bat and didn’t know what was in it. So there was no reason to throw him out of the game or call an automatic out. I heard Whiting say “bullshit” a few times before giving up and going back to the bench.
But if Buck thought he was getting it tucked to him, then he was about to find out what a real screwing was like. On the next pitch the hitter put one out of the park down the left field line, foul by a good five feet. It would’ve hit the sentry box if it stayed fair. The third base umpire took about three baby steps toward the wall and signaled that it was a home run. This time Whiting raced across the diamond, screamed at the ump, and kicked dirt around the place like he was Billy Martin having one of his temper tantrums. Then he appealed the call to the home plate umpire, but that bozo said the same thing, and the three runs that scored brought Alcatraz back into the ball game.
“Looked foul as hell to me,” I said to Renfro.
“From here, maybe, but we don’t have a good angle on it like they do,” he answered. He was still busy booing Whiting who took his time getting back to the dugout.
With the stuff that went on that inning, I knew the SharQues didn’t have a chance unless they could keep scoring runs without the umpires having any decisions to make.
And the prisoners in the stands had their own way of helping out the team. There must have been over 200 of them there, and when the game started I noticed that almost all of them were holding onto oranges. I figured that was the Alcatraz substitute for hot dogs and beer and that the place would need a good cleaning when the game was over. But as soon as one of the Rocks hit a popup over near third base, in foul territory, the convicts on that side of the field got up and started throwing their oranges in the air. It was raining oranges all around the baseball. The third baseman kept his eye on it as long as he could, but then ducked out of the way when he saw a couple of oranges coming down where he was standing. The ball landed on the ground and there was a roar from the crowd. Whiting was waved back to the dugout by the umpire at home before he could get halfway there to protest. Then, as soon as the oranges were picked up off the field, the Rocks hitter doubled in another run with the new life he’d been given at the plate. You could say the SharQues got lucky after that because there were only two more infield popups by the Rocks the rest of the game. Both of them were out near second, so it was a much tougher throw from the stands. But that didn’t stop the prisoners who still had oranges from trying.
I left Renfro and went into the SharQues dugout at the start of the sixth. At that point San Quentin was down by a run. I told Whiting who I was and got a chance to see his huge paws and feel his strong grip when he shook my hand. He had deep pockmarks on both cheeks and thick salt and pepper eyebrows that looked like inverted “V”s. He told me to take the seat next to him and I did.
The first two SharQues hitters in the inning fanned and Whiting was heating up. He banged his fist on the dugout wall a couple of times and then walked back and forth in front of me.
“He’s doing something out there to make the ball dip like that,” he said. “But I’ve been watching him every second and I can’t figure it out. He’s not hiding any Vaseline on his cap or anywhere else and he hasn’t been rubbing the ball against his belt buckle. All I know is the movement he’s getting on his pitches isn’t natural. No one’s that good.”
Humboldt was up next. He stepped away from the on-deck circle and walked toward the batter’s box.
“It’s the catcher,” I told Whiting.
“What do you mean?” he asked, turning to me quickly.
“An old trick, Buck. The catcher’s got a few small nails, like thick thumbtacks, taped to his hand. The points of the nails stick out of the tape and go right through the leather inside his glove. Every time he catches the ball, he rubs it against those points before he throws it back to the pitcher. That’s what’s cutting it up. Go take a look for yourself.”
Just then Humboldt swung and missed at a ball that landed in the dirt in front of the plate. In his first two at bats he’d had a strikeout and a fly ball to deep left field. There wasn’t much I could say about him at that point except that he had a picture perfect swing and had shown a cannon for an arm on one throw from right field to third base.
Whiting called time and walked out to the plate. He started going at it with the umpire and I could see he was getting hotter by the second. He put his hands on his hips and was pushing his face right up close to the ump’s mask, following him whichever way he turned. Finally, the ump waved to the pitcher and called for the ball. Instead of throwing it back, the pitcher rolled it in toward home, probably hoping it would pick up some dirt and hide the cuts.
Whiting scooped up the baseball, turned it around in his hands and showed it to the umpire. Then he began pointing to the catcher and hollering, “Look at his hands,” over and over again. The umpire must have known what he’d find if he did because he kept stalling and trying to move away from Buck. But Buck wouldn’t quit, and kept jawing until he finally convinced the ump he had no choice. When the catcher took off his glove, he had half a roll of tape around his hand, just as I’d said, and everyone near the plate could see the nails sticking out. All this time the prisoners in the stands were jeering at Whiting, throwing oranges up in the air around where he stood. The other two umps had come in to see what was going on, and one of them had an orange land with a squish on his shoulder.
I was sure the umpire would throw the catcher out of the game for something like that, but I was wrong again. He just walked part way to the Rocks’ dugout, flipped the tape and nails in that direction, and hollered, “Play ball” as he went back to his position. He tossed a new baseball out to the mound, and Humboldt hit the very next pitch over the fence in dead center field.
Whiting thanked me when he got back to the dugout, but still couldn’t understand why the ball hadn’t done any tricks for his own pitcher. When I told him how the cut ball always got back to the umpire at home before the Alcatraz hitters batted, he picked up on the fact that the umps were trying to help the Rocks beat his team.
“Those bastards must be getting paid off,” he said.
The game stayed tied for a couple of innings, but as soon as the Rocks couldn’t doctor the ball anymore and lost that advantage, they pulled another trick out of their bag. Larry Laurel, the SharQues pitcher, had been getting stronger as the game moved along. But while he was working in the last of the seventh, he suddenly began sneezing and couldn’t stop. He’d go ten or more sneezes, one right after the other, and then hurry to get a pitch off as soon as it let up for a few seconds. But he’d lose control in the middle of his delivery, sneeze again and be way out of the strike zone. Laurel walked two batters before Whiting went out to the mound. The kid seemed to be able to hold it back while Buck talked to him, but as soon as he dried his pitching hand with the rosin bag and put his foot on the rubber, it started all over again, even worse than before.
“The prisoners started clapping their hands and chanting, “Play ball! Play ball!” Laurel couldn’t do anything but sneeze, and the noise from the stands got louder and louder. The home plate umpire came about halfway over to the San Quentin dugout. He shouted in to Whiting that unless Laurel was ready to throw in the next 30 seconds, the SharQues had to bring in a new pitcher. There was nothing Whiting could say, a
nd Laurel’s condition didn’t get any better. He looked like a beaten man out there, bent halfway over at the waist, sneezing continuously, wiping his nose with the arm of his shirt and spitting all over the mound.
While this was going on, I noticed that some of the Rocks players were laughing up a storm in their dugout. I thought something smelled, and then it hit me all of a sudden. When Whiting started up the steps to go bring in a relief pitcher, I told him I wanted to see the rosin bag Laurel was using. When they came off the field, I said I thought I’d figured out what was going on but that Buck would have to sacrifice one guy on the bench that he was sure he wouldn’t need later on in the game. He whistled one of the players over and I had the kid grab the bag in his hand and then rub his finger against his nose. A few seconds later the poor guy was doing a perfect imitation of Larry Laurel.
“It’s certain kinds of pepper seeds they put in there,” I told Whiting. “Jalapeno peppers and other hot stuff. It was a gag they used to pull in Single-A ball years ago. That’s how they welcomed some new phenom pitcher into the league. They tortured the guy his first or second time out. It got so bad they made it unlawful, and a team would forfeit the game if it tried that crap.”
Whiting was furious at losing his best pitcher that way. He grabbed the rosin bag with a towel, folded the towel over a few times until he could hold it in the palm of his hand, walked halfway across the infield, and flung it toward the Alcatraz dugout. His face was bright red, and I remember thinking that if someone had given him a hand grenade just then, he would have stuck it inside the towel, pulled the pin, and thrown the whole thing at the Rocks players on the bench.
The San Quentin relief pitcher was allowed to take as long as he wanted to warm up, but he stopped a little too soon. The first two batters he faced hit consecutive doubles and the Rocks took a three-run lead.
The SharQues came right back and got the hit from Humboldt that should have tied the score again in the eighth, but the umpires were still playing games. With two runners on, Darnell hit another blast, this time to left. It was over the sentry box, about six feet fair when it left the park, no doubt about it. But the third base ump, who had called the foul drive by the Alcatraz cleanup hitter a home run in one of the early innings, waved his arms away from the field, signaling that the ball was foul. Whiting couldn’t believe it when he saw the home run being taken away from his team. He pulled off his cap, screamed out a few swear words he must have been saving for a call as bad as that, and was about to race out onto the field.
“Don’t bother,” I said. “It’s a waste of time. The umps are in the bag. You said so yourself.”
He banged the side of the dugout with both of his massive fists. “Sons of bitches,” he hissed.
Humboldt walked back to the plate slowly, shaking his head in disbelief all the way. He got good wood on the next pitch but lined it straight to the center fielder, who caught the ball without having to move a step.
Alcatraz had a giant pitcher on the team; a right-hander. I’m not kidding when I tell you he was tall enough to play basketball up front for the Lakers, weighed close to 250 pounds, and looked as mean as they come. He had a heavy, black mustache, sideburns like Elvis Presley, and a growth of hair around his chin that was probably into its second week. It was a weird combination. The Rocks had a three-run lead after eight innings, and brought in this monster to try and close out San Quentin in the ninth. But it was a mistake, because the big guy had trouble finding the plate and wasn’t all that hard to hit when he got it over. He could scare the crap out of you when he looked in from the mound. He was someone you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley, but pitching wasn’t his thing. Not that day, anyway.
Before the Rocks manager finally gave him the hook, San Quentin had two runs in, the bases loaded, and one out. The new pitcher who took over was a southpaw, and he must have been told to throw nothing but fastballs. He followed orders, and it took just four pitches for the umpire to call the next SharQues hitter out on strikes. The trouble was that three of the deliveries were so far off the plate that any manager would have chewed out his player, and maybe even fined him, for swinging at any of them. Whiting was absolutely boiling, but he knew that bitching about it was useless. His club was down to its last out.
The Berry brother who played shortstop began walking toward the plate. I’d seen during the game that the biggest difference between the twins was that Straw couldn’t hit to save his life, but Blue, the second baseman, handled the bat like Pete Rose. He was already three for four in the game, with a double. At that point Buck must have figured he had one chance to get even with the Rocks and the umpires for everything they’d done to him and his team that day. He called Straw back to the dugout and hustled him into the tunnel that led down to the team’s locker room. He sent Blue in there too, and told them to switch uniform shirts in a hurry.
“Get up there and hit,” he told Blue, “and swing at it if it’s anywhere near the plate. He’s throwing all heat, no breaking stuff.” Blue grinned and headed for the batter’s box. When I looked down the bench to where Straw had taken a seat, his face was one big grin too.
On the second pitch, Blue nailed one into the gap in right center. Two runs scored, and the runner on first slid across the plate before the catcher tagged him, but the umpire pumped his fist and called him out. There was no holding Whiting back, and he ran out to argue the play. By the time he got there, the SharQues base runner had his face almost inside the umpire’s mask, shouting to beat the band. I don’t know if the runner intentionally spit during the argument or whether it was just an accident, but the umpire pulled off his mask to wipe his face with the sleeve of his jacket and then thumbed the guy out of the game as soon as he put it back on. Buck saw what happened, stared hard at the ump for a few seconds, and then jogged back to the bench without saying a word. I figured he was afraid of getting thrown out too if he did.
So now the SharQues had a one-run lead to try and hold onto in the last of the ninth, and I was tempted to tell Whiting to fasten his seatbelt. I was sure something bad had to be coming. The first Rocks batter hit an easy fly ball to right that Humboldt grabbed. The next guy up never took the bat off his shoulder and walked. Buck and I could both see that two of the pitches the ump called balls were right down the middle — perfect strikes. He turned to me and just shrugged his shoulders in disgust. I thought San Quentin had the game won when the cleanup man smashed a double play ball to the third baseman, but he took his eye off it for an instant and the ball bounced off his glove. That put runners on first and second. Then the Rocks center fielder surprised everyone with a gorgeous bunt and reached base without a throw.
As you could expect, there was one hell of a racket coming from the stands, especially when Alcatraz loaded the bases. It was the kind of mob eruption that would have had prison guards reaching for their guns in any other setting. Whiting ran out to the mound and called the whole infield around him for a conference.
“Anything up?” I asked, when he trotted back in.
“No, just a little pep talk. I told them there were still a few oranges left in the seats, so to get back in here quick when they made the last out.”
The Rocks next batter fouled off the first pitch and then let three more go by without showing any interest. The SharQues battery thought they had him struck out twice, but the guy was still up there, with a count of 2-2, because the ump ignored two sensational curve balls that broke in over the plate. Buck’s team got a break, though, when the Rocks hitter swung and missed at a low slider. He threw his bat on the ground, upset with himself, and started back toward the dugout. What happened next was unbelievable. The umpire called him back to the plate, indicating with his fingers that the count was 3-2. The SharQues catcher yanked off his mask and was so upset he began banging it against his thigh without realizing it while he moved in on the ump to get him to correct himself and call the strikeout. The pitcher ran in toward the plate. “That was strike three,” he screamed. “It w
as 2-2 before that pitch. He’s out of there.”
“This has really gotten ugly,” I said to Whiting. “And if the next one is down the pike, he’ll call it ball four.”
“I don’t think so,” he said. ‘This bullshit is going to stop right here.’
Whiting waited for the argument at home to end. He heard the umpire telling his players they were wrong about the count. He was sure, the ump said, that he hadn’t called any strikes after the foul ball, and told the pitcher to get back where he belonged or he’d be out of the game.
Then Buck left the dugout and walked very slowly out toward the plate. He stopped about ten feet short of home and stood there. I don’t know if he said anything to the umpire just then because he had his back to me, but a few seconds later the ump walked over to where Buck was waiting. It looked to me like Whiting didn’t want anyone else to hear what he had to say. He did all the talking when they were up close because I could see that the umpire didn’t open his mouth. Then Buck called his catcher over, whispered something to him and came back to the dugout.
“Something tells me that SOB will start doing his job now,” he said, and winked at me.
The noise in the park picked up again quickly. The runners at the three bases took their leads and tried to shake up the pitcher by calling him all kinds of names. The 3-2 pitch was a borderline strike. It could have been called either way and no one would have had a legitimate complaint. If it caught the outside edge of the plate, it was by the width of a toothpick. I couldn’t believe it when the umpire’s right arm shot up in the air and then in our direction while he hollered out the third strike. Buck just sat there calmly, but I could see a little bit of a smile on his lips. For the first time in the game the Alcatraz manager was out on the field raising a beef, but it got him nowhere.
Painting the Corners Page 21
